Fairytale
by AmazingGraceless
Summary: Clara discovers her mother's love of magical fairytales is a lot darker than she initially believed.


**AN: For QFL, prompt was to use a line in Queen's "The Show Must Go On." 1,028 words.**

Fairytales_ of yesterday will grow, but never die._ The words lay on the tomb of Clara's mother's grave.

Her mother always did like the fairytales of the Wizarding World. Clara saw the special editions of _Toadstool Tales _and _Tales of Beedle the Bard_ in her mother's home office, lining the shelves that she dusted with care. If Clara was to pull the worn and ragged paperback versions— cheap, mass-produced, and of no special value compared to the others— she would see evocative quotes highlighted, underlined in quill ink that was the color of a raven's wing.

The color of Clara's cloaks. She avoided the eyes of her father during the funeral. He was exact in his mourning, precise and meticulous.

Mr. Bishop had no time for fairytales.

It made Clara wonder how her mother had ever fallen for someone like him.

He was not like his beloved wife or dreamer daughter. Not a whimsical bone in his body, Clara was certain of that.

But it was alright.

Clara would return to Ilvermorny soon enough. She would not have to wear black for long, or stay so exact, so traditional. The way a pureblood witch was thought to behave.

As Clara followed the funeral party back into the manor that belonged to her mother's family— the Potters, one of the Honorable Twelve— that her father was supposed to inherit, she thought of how some said that being a pureblood in magical America wasn't supposed to matter.

Not as much as it did in the Old Country, anyway.

Clara thought that was absolute owl-crap. The class-distinctions were still there, dressed up under a history of witch-trials and neutrality, creating a mythology of a dream that any witch or wizard could be important in America.

Never mind that at the end of the day, it all mattered if you were descended from one of the Honorable Twelve, the first Aurors.

Clara was so lucky. But her father was not. While the Bishops certainly were one of the first families to come to America, they were far from pure-blooded, appearing first in the No-Maj-born, Bridget Bishop.

They were not one of the Twelve, another crime against her father's achievements.

Clara hung her cloak on the rack, the warmth of the manor a sharp contrast to the cold inside. Numb, unfeeling— that was how Mr. Bishop wished for her to behave.

And so she would.

While others stood around, telling Mr. Bishop how truly sorry they were for his loss, and how if he needed anything— no, really— whatsoever, to send them an owl and such, Clara snuck upstairs to her mother's office.

Clara tried to golden slender handle, already collecting dust. It did not open— as it had not since the day the forensic wizards levitated her mother's corpse off of the ground and out of her private place.

She had been sick for years, Clara knew that. It was a source of fretting in her father, a source of worry.

No one had expected Rosemary Potter to die so soon.

Glancing over her shoulder, Clara saw and heard no one coming to find her. She drew her wand out of the hidden pocket in the black velvet mourning dress.

"_Alohamora,_" she whispered, tracing the rune shape as she did so. She heard a faint click, and tried the handle.

Smooth as Snallygaster butter, it slid right open. Clara shut herself in, determined to not be lectured at yet again by Mr. Bishop.

The room was disturbingly cold, as if the light and warmth had died with Rosemary. Nothing had been touched or disturbed— for how could it? Clara knew her father mourned through objects and rooms— and this was a room to be rid of, since it was his wife's favorite.

Clara even saw the imprint of her mother's body, where _she _had found her, the day after Christmas vacation, just as she was beginning to dread returning to Ilvermorny, as all schoolchildren do.

Clara preferred not to think of that awful time.

Neither did Mr. Bishop, who she heard sob, "It should have been me, who found her. It should have been me."

It was whenever he thought he was alone that he whispered such things. Clara accidentally stumbled upon him in such a state whenever she had come to gain solace from the last immediate member of her family, all distant relatives be damned.

But she never had the heart to reveal she had heard such introspection.

Besides, she was to return to Ilvermorny and her studies, where she could do as she pleased and mourn as she pleased.

It wasn't fair, Clara thought as she lit the lamps in the room. Fairytales and legends could keep living on, but her mother never would, for all that she loved them.

Clara would have traded any silly fairy story for her mother to live forever.

She couldn't portray her emotions, not truly.

That wasn't proper. It was too real, too raw, too red-faced for Mr. Bishop to approve of the display, not when there was company over. Even if Clara privately believed that they would perpetually have company over.

As Clara was about to turn around and leave, she noticed that a book was open. A copy of _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_, perhaps Rosemary Potter's favorite collection of fairytales in the magical world.

Clara hesitated over the book as she read the note that would change her life forever. In the beautiful scrawl it read:

_Hopping pot— part of our family. How many of these link to the Peverells, to our family?_

_Does any of this have anything to do with our Malediction?_

_Could Clara have it?_

Clara's mouth dropped open, more out of a lack of awareness, like she had fallen out of the Snakewood Tree.

It wasn't dragon pox that had killed her mother, like Mr. Bishop had told her.

It was something that Clara was at risk for.

It was the stuff of a fairytale.

Of a fairytale that had grown past the briars of text and the castle of books to never die, and instead take the lives of those who had loved it.


End file.
